


Our Skin a Canvas

by crowleyshouseplant (orphan_account)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-13
Updated: 2012-01-13
Packaged: 2017-10-29 11:04:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/319209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/crowleyshouseplant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They meet in a tattoo parlor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Our Skin a Canvas

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by prompts from Callowyn and Lena.

Lisa’s on her knees. Forgo the mat, just the cold hard linoleum that smells too much of lemon and lime and acid in her nose, making her heady and achy and a little nauseous.

Sweat glues her skin to the slick fake plastic.

She tucks her head, like she’s going to demur, but it’s not really that—because she’s in control as she leans her body back, muscles doing only what she wants them to—

Her hips want to jut out, like they’re pleading and wanting and maybe they are but she only asks for what she wants and she keeps them still, her skin shivering over her bones as she pulls her shoulder blades in tight like they’re wings, lifting her chest as she lets her head go back, like she’s going to fall but there is no gravity because her muscles are stronger than that, strong enough to counteract the tug and pull of the stretch as she lifts her hands from her hips, presses her palms together—forcing her fingers to stand straight, to not curl down against her palms, clutching hard, hands remembering something that her brain doesn’t and so she forces them ever straighter as she reaches behind her towards the floor, locking her knuckles so that they won’t curve, won’t grasp, won’t curl into fists jammed against her thighs so that they won’t seek out something smaller, something palm-fitting, something harder, something sharper and then her brain flutters black ragged smoking curtains and she squeezes her eyes shut, relieved when she her scalp pushes against the hard kitchen floor, the way she can begin to feel the strands of her hair begin to snarl, to tangle, to pull at their roots in half-hearted, breathy tugs as she inhales.

Tilting her hips opens her up to the sunlight streaming through the windows, too open with too much light for anything rank to grow in there again, to fill her up because she’s flat, bottoming herself out as her hands grope their way towards her feet, elbows digging in, grounding her, as her fingers curl around her ankles— _she’s here, she’s here—_

Her forehead is hot against the cold floor as she breathes in deep as she can, wide as she can, stretching out the stiff elastic of her lungs until they press against her rib cage, until a cough threatens to rip through her esophagus and through her lips—

Can’t close her eyes—she has to make sure the air is clear.

She stays in the pose until her spine protests before curling upon the floor, knees flush against her chest.

In the evenings, after Ben has gone to bed, Lisa takes pens apart and writes in her skin the names that she remembers against the ledge of her shin bone (no one ever sees with her yoga pants)—names like Ben and his father, her mother and her sister.  On the soles of her feet, she starts drawing again, images of home, of skeletons bending and twisting, of people joined at the groin in all her favorite positions.

Even as she graduates from a dissected pen and takes up real tattooing again—as she fills her skin and body with ink and words and images, she’ll remember, she’ll be too full to forget again, too full to hold anything that wasn’t completely hers as her brain hiccoughs over a year and a half because Lisa, in the dark, on the pain with late night television on the sci fi channel, wonders how she could ever truly remember if she has ever forgotten something—if the only thing saying anything about anything was this emptiness in the corner of her eye, the brief blipping of consciousness that’s as tangible, graspable, as smoke on the water.

A year later, a woman comes into Lisa’s parlor. Her name’s Amelia and she’s dragged in by her kid, a teenager, a daughter with eyes that aren’t quite her own, the way that Lisa thinks her own eyes look back at her in the mirror sometimes—the same eyes that Amelia has.

Lisa rubs her mouth with the palm of her hands.

But Amelia has something different in her eyes, a calmness, an assurance—like her skin is a fortress, her neck a tower of David. And there, just peaking over the thick cotton strap of her tank top and stamped on the jutting lines of her collar bones, a symbol, like sun that never sets, too bright for shadows to ever linger.

Lisa edges closer, fingertips restless to trace those edges, but she pulls back—and she says, “What is that?”

And Amelia licks her lips, flicks from Lisa’s eyes to her mouth and back again, and maybe she sees the same eyes, the eyes that are both hers and not hers, and she says, “My husband was taken away from me. Someone tried to take me away from me too.” She steps closer to Lisa. “I won’t let that happen again—” tapping the tattoo, her finger a dull drum against the bone.

“I need that,” Lisa says, and she hates how her voice shakes. She hates how she can hold the most complicated yoga pose, how her wrists won’t shiver for the most delicate design, but her voice falters, how her hands flex and grip around knife handles and she has to squeeze her eyes so that she won’t see the blade at Ben’s throat, and she forces herself to breathe, hands and palms and fingers pressed together between her breaths.

Not a prayer, because no one’s listening. Pleading with herself,  _steady, steady now_.

And Amelia nods, asks for no explanations, “Okay,” she says, and so Lisa closes shop early, flips the placard to closed, and she wonders if Amelia’s done this before because her hands are familiar with the tools of the trade, with the ink, and Lisa bends over the counter, hitches her shirt up and says, “Put it there—right in the small of my back—“

And she’s relieved when Amelia doesn’t protest, but just touches her softly, mapping the slopes and valleys of her muscles with the tips of her fingertips, swabs with alcohol, and begins.

Lisa doesn’t mind the pain.

Afterwards, Lisa offers the design—free, just a token, a pretty little good luck charm—to those who wish it. Most allow her to put some form of the design on their skin, usually cleverly blended in with their original pattern.

But for those who refuse—Lisa’s muscles coil, and she wonders if that’s really their eyes staring back at her as she takes their money quickly, hurriedly counts their change, rushes them to the door.

Amelia drops by occasionally, once with a pack slung over her back. “Whole world out there, vessels with no locks and no keys—and too much ignorance.” She waits, one foot on the threshold, one foot already on the step. She sees Claire in the car, bare feet pressed against the windshield like she’s walking on air.

Lisa runs a thumb down her arm. “We need to pick up Ben, first.”

Amelia nods.

They get in the car. They never come back. They have no map but the one they leave behind them—inky tributaries stained red with blood, mountain ranges of salt, graffiti symbols on warehouse walls, and pools of holy oil.


End file.
